Television viewing is such a big part of family life that it's really no wonder that traditions will start to form, where you and your family watch the same movies or events on TV year after year. My family has several of these traditions. Some of the movies we watch coincide with big holidays, and some have no relation to the holidays but just come on at approximately the same time each year. Some are live events that are broadcast each year. Now that DVDs have come along, we don't even need to wait for the movies to air once a year (but we usually still do). These shows are now so closely associated with family gatherings that I can't really watch them on my own. Such is the power of television when it comes to family bonding, I guess. Here are the shows that my family never misses.

1. The Sound of Music
When I was younger, I used to roll my eyes and complain when my parents made us watch this movie. I thought the story was boring, and I just hated musicals in general. But as I got older, I started to appreciate the basic plot on a different level. The songs were no longer annoying breaks, but rather they started to make sense to me. Now I count The Sound of Music as one of my favorite movies of all time and I carry the entire soundtrack around on my iPod.

2. The Oscars
My mom in particular loves celebrity gossip and tabloid magazines, so the Oscars is her favorite television event of the year. The family always gets together to watch the Oscars, and we spice things up by having a "Pick the Winners" contest. The person who guesses the most Oscar winners correctly gets different prizes donated by all the participants. This contest just adds a special twist to the evening. One year I was sick, and stayed at my apartment to watch the broadcast by myself. It wasn't half as fun as watching it with my family.

3. It's a Wonderful Life
The networks show a lot of movies at Christmas time each year, but It's a Wonderful Life is probably the best one out of all of them. It's a great movie with a great message, and it can be enjoyed by people of all ages. This is a movie that I have always enjoyed, even when I was too young to understand what it was really about.

4. The Wizard of Oz
This is another movie that is chock-full of meaning (some people even claim that it is a political satire, while others say that it has many strange ties to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album). I don't necessarily buy into those theories, but they do exist. I just like how the characters went in search of things (courage, heart, brains) that they actually had all along. It's a profound lesson that people of all ages can benefit from.